


AfterStorm

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-24
Updated: 2006-05-16
Packaged: 2019-01-19 23:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12420558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Rain washes us away. How do you rebuild a soul?





	1. New Rain, New Year

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**AfterStorm**

**  
__  
**

Prologue: New Rain, New Year

Seasons have passed so quickly  
Since I felt that first big storm  
Still there have been times of drought  
When I've prayed for the clouds to form  
And I often hear the thunder  
And I know of its coming rain  
Many times in my life I'll kneel under  
The moving showers that brought this change

-Pray For Rain

 

\----------

 

It’s raining.

 

Remus pushes his forehead against the windowpanes and thinks of each raindrop splashing against the glass as a mistake he has made. He sees the primary school children come home from school, pretending to be much older than they are, boys putting on their father’s costumes and girls walking with hips swinging back and forth.

 

He lifts himself up from the window, watching the imprint of his forehead slowly fade away, and within the space of ten seconds, it is no longer there. Ignoring the pain in his knees from sitting so long, he walks downstairs and out the door. 

 

He walks down the street, past the children who don’t notice this quiet boy of sixteen, past the houses with their perfect gardens and chemically green lawns, past two junctions. He is soaked to the bone in three minutes flat. 

 

That’s when he beings to run. 

 

He runs so fast that the cars go by in blurs, that his lungs ache and his legs burn, that gasping for breath is like drinking liquid mercury, and finally when he cannot move another step he flings himself off the ground as high as he can and for a moment, he is _flying_. 

But then he lands in a tumbling heap of mangled limbs and gasping breaths and he lays here, trying to inhale as much rain as possible and drown out his lungs. He lays here and waits for that car to run him over and tear him apart to see if he finally has a heart in that sorry body of his. 

But no one comes, just like the last time and the knives are rusty and the bottles empty. He lays here and realizes that this place, here -- this is the fence that blocks him from the end of his road. 

So Remus lays here in the rain again, hoping for a new storm to wash over him, wondering if it could ever flood him away if he waited long enough. 

 

 

\----------

 

It’s raining.

 

Lily closes her eyes and thinks of each raindrop bringing in a new smell of autumn. Apples. Cinnamon sticks. Old leaves. Pumpkin pie. 

 

The rain comes down so heavily that it sounds like the shower’s still running, even after you’ve turned it off. Rain that makes you think of crashing waves, waterfalls, flash floods, sobbing. Rain that makes you think you’ve done something horribly wrong. Rain that makes you want to crawl back into bed where the sheets still hold the imprint of your body. Rain that makes you wish you had a steaming mug of hot chocolate and a fireplace. 

 

She leaps up in a moment of spontaneity and walks out the door. _Lily Evans, you are crazy_ , she berates herself, but for once, she doesn’t listen to her judgment. 

 

She doesn’t even have shoes on.

 

She takes tentative steps first, as if the rain will suddenly push her back in the room. After a while, she begins to find a pattern in the way the wind howls, in the way the rain hits her nose, and she blinks. 

 

She thinks of beaded moccasins stepping around a fire, ballet flats tiptoeing across a stage, the clicking of tap shoes singing along. She imagines the raindrops washing off her skin, and then realizes that the world finally smells like autumn. 

 

Lily spins gleefully. Today, there is no such thing as family or friends or even studies. Today, she is independent and barely even acknowledges how shocked she feels at the lightness in her steps. 

 

 

\----------

 

It’s raining. 

 

Sirius has stormed off again from his home and incidentally, also from shelter and warmth from this down pouring. He grumbles nonsense as he walks, shifting the jumper tighter around his body. There are sporadic puddles on the ground and he wonders why they can’t make the roads all even. When he gets to a puddle, he looks away, ashamed to see what might be staring back at him. 

 

He closes his eyes tightly and tilts his head up. He thinks of each raindrop as each name his mother has called him since he can remember. He cannot see the rain, but he feels it running down in rivulets across his sunken cheeks and dripping onto his expensive clothes. He knows that when he eventually returns him, his mother will be furious with him, and he feels extraordinarily happy with this thought. 

 

He opens his eyes.

 

The last time he looked at the sky — really looked, not just glanced — it seemed so saturated with stars that the slightest movement he made could’ve knocked them all out and extinguished their burning. 

 

Even though there are no stars he can see right now, it seems that they all picked today to come falling down. He opens his mouth and gasps out an inaudible scream at the sky as he catches these stars in his mouth. He tastes remorse mixed with the vinegar of loss over an ashy fire of sorrow with a pinch of grief and anger, mixed into one paste, thick as honey and black as ebony, and then he finally recognizes it is anger in its purest form, unrefined, its sharp taste dissolving on his tongue and he knows that it could’ve only come from another universe. 

 

And so Sirius drinks in the stars and lets them wash over him, and he realizes that he can no longer feel the cold. 

 

 

\----------

 

It’s raining. 

 

Like the day Hannah was born. Peter was only six, but he can still remember every detail, right down to what color her blanket was (light pink with blue polka dots). 

 

It was Christmas Eve and way too warm for that time of the year. What should’ve been the biggest snowstorm of the season turned into a torrential downpour. It just wasn’t Christmas anymore, not when there were still rain droplets clinging on to the branches of their trees and one could still see the grass. 

 

On Christmas Day (which they celebrated in the hospital), Peter shut all the blinds and pretended that there _was_ a blanket of white outside. He pretended to be cold so that he could sit in front of the heater and once again pretend that it was a fireplace. It was too hot for the actual fireplace, yet too cold to go without scarves.

 

Peter hates things that are in-between. In his opinion, there is only black and white. People who tell you there is a grey are always the ones who can’t admit anything to themselves. 

 

His feet are leading him to the St. Mary Hospital. He passes the cracks in the sidewalks and tries not to step on them. His left foot has five cracks, but his right foot only has three. He needs to even them out. 

 

He stares straight ahead and thinks of each raindrop in front of him as one of Hannah’s smiles. 

 

He stops and loses count of his cracks when he can’t remember what her third smile looked like. 

 

It is only autumn right now, but Peter pretends again that it is Christmas time, six years ago. 

 

 

\----------

 

It’s raining. 

 

James has a brief flash of playing Quidditch in weather like this once very long ago. He had flown through this rain, pretending it was an enemy of millions of numbers, falling all around him. Tonight, he thinks of each raindrop as a path he never took. 

 

He wanders aimlessly around his gardens, hoping that perhaps his memory will fail him and he’ll become impossibly lost. His back is slumped over and his hands stuck in his pockets, a posture that his mother would be angry at if she caught him in. She was always complaining about his posture. 

 

He’s trying and failing to convince himself that everything he’s done was because it was just better for everyone involved. That it’s the right thing to do, the altruistic thing. 

 

It’s far easier than telling himself the truth. 

 

His shoes squelch the mud underneath them, the dirt bubbling up to stain the sides of his sneakers with mountains of brown. All of a sudden, he feels very weary and sits down heavily, right in the middle of this. 

 

The sad thing is, he can’t even realize who he’s become. 

 

Just like that, it’s harder for him to breathe. It takes him a while to realize this has nothing to do with the rain that doesn’t seem to stop, or the fact that his clothes are now ruined, but rather that his throat is only half as wide as usual, tears stuffing it so that every breath he takes needs twice as much work. 

 

There is a lump of something in his throat and it _stings_. His vision is becoming blurrier, and he can’t make out the individual blades of grass anymore. 

 

James has always believed in second chances for everyone he knew. Now he needs to convince himself. 

 

 

\----------

 

August, Year 6

\----------

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. An Affinity For Life

**AfterStorm**

_**Chapter One:** An Affinity For Life_

For a long time now, Peter has been questioning his religion.

 

He was born and raised a Christian, but for the past six years, he has begun to rebel. He can’t remember the last time he actually got down on his knees and prayed. He has removed the cross from around his neck, the Bible from his nightstand, and the faith from his heart. The last time he stepped into a church was when he was barely taller than the pews. 

 

Once, he walked into an empty church and sat down and looked at the stained glass and marveled at how his voice echoed so against the tall ceilings. Sometime during his four hours there, he began to start classifying who would’ve gone to Heaven and who would’ve gone to Hell at Hogwarts. 

 

He wonders if all the streets in Heaven are paved with gold. Wouldn’t the people get tired of that soon, day after day walking on gold? Wouldn’t it start losing its value, and wouldn’t people begin to take things like gold for granted? Would the gold ever scuff off? Peter decides that if you get to Heaven, you get a pair of cloth shoes to walk around in. 

 

There would be no crime in Heaven. There would be no rebellions, no revolts, no need for police officers. Everyone would go around in their little white robes, quoting from the Bible, and speaking old English. Peter decides that Heaven sounds quite boring. 

 

After Hannah left, Peter went through a rebelling phase. He screamed at his parents every day, slammed his door until it cracked, and looted around the liquor cabinet. His parents had ignored him, perhaps thinking that after the first two monstrous arguments, it would be better to let him get out of this phase himself. One day he came back from school and decided to try to be a Christian again. He tried to be Christian so that he could light a candle one day at Church, and hope that she would be able to see it from Heaven. He wished so badly that be believed in God so that he could pray to her, but ever since her death, he has admitted that there is no God. He tried to go to psychics, fortune-tellers, anyone that claimed to have a connection with the other world. He used to wish to _die_ while walking so that he could perhaps get a glance of her as they whisked him away from those pearly gates. 

 

When Peter was six and she was four, he snuck into her room and sat down next to her. They didn’t speak — although they were so young, they had already come to the point where in the simple silence of the room, they were able to know when Peter would grin and when Hannah would giggle. They held an entire conversation in their heads. Peter had stared out at the window, seeing the reflection of him and her. He memorized the stark contrast between them — him with his angel-blonde hair, her with her dark chocolate. His round blue eyes, her almond olive eyes. The way his nose ended in a nub while hers curved up. His full lips with the top one slightly larger than the bottom one and her thin, cupid-bow ones. He watched her breathing pattern through that mirror and tried to slow his down until they were equally matched. 

 

It seemed like a statement of his life. Hannah, always the first to laugh when he had still been smiling, the first to run when he’d been stretching, the first to go when he had just been getting used to her. He had always been the one to catch up to her, and he wonders what it would’ve been like if on that day, he had been the faster one. 

 

Over the years, he thought he could feel her standing behind him. He was certain that he would open a book and there would be a piece of her hair keeping her spot. He would start to run his bath and hear her laughing and dancing in the other room. Every time it happened, Peter pretended it hadn’t happened. He would turn the faucet on more, or shift his eyes away, or turn up the radio. He didn’t admit to himself that the only way he might see her again were in those last minutes that she could come back and gather her memories away like an armful of brilliant forest flowers, a consolation prize for second place and losing her forever.

 

If Hell is described as being blazing hot, does that mean Heaven’s freezing cold? Somehow, it doesn’t fit in with his preconceived notion of it. 

 

Quite frankly, Peter decides that he would much rather go to Hell and sneak glances of Hannah than be blinded by the gold of Heaven and no longer see her at all. 

 

 

\----------

 

Sirius’s room at home (if you could call it that) was filled with stars. 

 

Charts, drawings, notebooks, and of course, the ever-standing telescope, all bursting full of the heavens. Whenever his mother or brother came into his room, he’d hastily shove everything under his bed and put an Obscuring Charm on his telescope. 

 

It wasn’t that Astronomy was a bad subject. It was a Hogwarts subject that they had to take, after all. It was just…well, Muggles did the same thing. They too watched the movements of the vast expanse above them, questioning why and how. If his family ever found out that he actually wasn’t spending his time in there studying up future Death Eater techniques, it’d be hell to pay, even when he was named after a star. 

 

A few years ago, around the time he was six or seven, his mother had sneakily walked in on Sirius standing immobile next to his window, gazing out. “Stupid boy,”� she had admonished. “Why aren’t you studying on the books I bought for you yesterday?”�

 

He glanced down at the volumes strewn on the floor. Even from his faraway position, he could read the titles of some. _The Art of Power: How to Wield it and Control Others_. _Why Pure is Just Better_. _The Difference Between Us and Them_. 

 

Sirius had snorted silently, thinking that over his dead body would his mother finally peel open his eyes and force him to look inside them. “Mother,”� he had argued, still thinking that he could win a disagreement with her, “I’m named after a star. Shouldn’t I should know about my origins? Studying the skies would help me understood where I come from.”� 

 

She had slapped him upside the head. “You are a _Black_ , and that is where you come from. And as a Black, it is your duty to listen to your parents! Do not try to question where you come from ever again!”� 

 

Of course, he would continue to do so. How could he ever give in to her iron grip?

 

Late at night, when his brother’s snores were consistent and the two separate doors of his parent’s bedrooms finally closed, he’d crawl out of bed and gaze up. When he was feeling daring, he’d stumble out through his window and lay down on the wet grass beneath, staining his pajamas but feeling the happiest he could be in that wretched area. 

 

If he stared long enough, he could block out the screams and shouts nearby, the shattering of glass and bodies thrown against the thin walls. He no longer was a horrid _Black_ , he was out and independent, and he could make all the choices he wanted. The stars took him someplace far, far away in another galaxy. For a moment, he could connect with them, talk to them, and reach out, as far as his arms could stretch, trying desperately to grab onto a shooting meteor and fly with it to somewhere new. 

 

He once tried to count how many stars there were in the entire sky. It was in the dead of winter, and he had stayed out there for five hours, until he could no longer feel his feet or fingers and the mists of breath began freezing on his face. 

 

Seven thousand, three hundred fifty-two. 

 

That was how far he had gotten. The next day, he woke up with a fever and a sore throat. Amidst his mother’s growls at being so vulnerable to disease (although this was the first time he’d been sick in two years), he stared up at the dark canopy of his bed and told himself that if he had counted all the way to ten thousand, some angel from above would’ve swooped down and wrapped her shimmering wings around him and flew with him up and up until he finally did reach the homes of his beloved stars. 

 

Other times, he’d pretend that he was adopted. Oh, one look at Regulus and the rest of his family told him that physically, he was one hundred percent genetically related to them. But he’d close his eyes tightly, hands clasped over his ears to block out his father’s dinner guests and imagine that somewhere, a mother and father were sobbing, clutching onto to each other, wondering when they’d get their son back. “I’m right here,”� he would whisper. “Come get me. I’ll be waiting near the front door. I’ll be ready, I promise.”�

 

And even though he knew that they would never come, his irrationality then clouded over his mind and at midnight, he found himself at the front door, grabbing a suitcase filled with his star observations and waiting, waiting, waiting. 

 

They never came for him. 

 

That was the last time that he allowed himself to think about being saved. 

 

The other boys in the dormitory always wondered why during the dark of the night, a whisper would come from Sirius’s bed, mumbles of angels and stars filling the impenetrable difference between the four. 

 

 

\----------

 

 

You cannot exist in this world without leaving a piece of yourself behind. It could be real concrete things — shopping receipts, tire tracks from when you first learned to back out of the driveway, promises made but never kept. Or it could be other little things — things like fingerprints that stay invisible unless you know how to look for them. 

 

Today, Lily’s piece is the dent she is almost positive she created while sitting on her trunk.

 

She has never bothered with clothes until just one or two years ago. Of course, while at Hogwarts, everyone was required to dress in uniforms, but she has never realized how much you can personalize yours. When she came back home last summer, she suddenly had an affinity for personalization. She spent the summer months ripping, stitching, mending. She went through a two-week phase where she tore the stitches in her jeans, then backtracked and sewed them all back together again. 

 

Her trunk was packed with multitudes of clothes, even though she is fairly certain that she will never wear the majority of them at school. There are the jeans she had spent a week wearing all day so that whenever anything struck her as funny or curious, she would write it down on the material. They are covered with letters that blend in together to form new words altogether and stars and broken hearts in the pocket seams.

 

There’s the tank top she spent three days on embroidering lilies on the bottom hem even though she hates lilies. Her argument is that they were much simpler than madly tacking down a sunflower or a rose. Even though she thinks sunflowers are unnaturally tall for a flower and that roses are overrated. 

 

There’s the multitude of CDs from The Beatles that she knows she’ll never be able to listen to at Hogwarts but carry around for sentimental value. (Or at least, that’s what she told her mum.) 

 

She likes forgetting that she’s a witch. Of course she likes having magic fix something like _that_ and the fact that she can make things happen with only a wooden stick, but there’s something calming about washing the dishes by hand and plunging in up to your elbows in soap bubbles, or the humming and continuity of mowing a lawn and feeling like she’s giving the world a haircut. 

 

When she came home from Hogwarts this year, she finished her homework in the first week, then stowed all her books away and vacuumed the entire first floor of their house. 

 

She gives one final yank at the zipper and the trunk pulls shut. She hopes she didn’t break the zipper or catch something on it, but by now, she’s too exhausted to even care. 

 

So Lily runs down the stairs, fixes herself a glass of homemade lemonade, and spends the rest of the day on her front porch. 

 

At around the eight o’clock hour, the sun finally begins setting. She glances up from the murder mystery she was currently absorbed in, then forgot all about the suspect who she was beginning to think was the brother. 

 

The sky seemed alive with color. That is the only way she can begin to describe it. There is a color splashed upon color that tricks her into believing the grass is no longer green and the only thing with a _tint_ of anything in it is this moment. It’s like God tripped over something and splashed all the colors He had at His fingertips over the entire sky. There is no name for the color — it seems like a mix of all the golds and blushes and lavenders and tangerine oranges and all the memories she has stuffed in her pockets to keep for later. There is no way that half the world is already plunged into darkness. Color like this should be able to skip around time and light up the entire world so that over in fishing villages in Japan, they would stop and glance up. 

 

She wishes she had a camera to capture this moment, yet she doesn’t feel like getting up either. Half of her shouts out, _go away, go away!_ to the sun, how it hurts her to look at this, while the other half never wants this moment to end. 

 

So Lily stares straight ahead at the horizon where all this color seems to be spilling over from, trying to taste this instant, like stolen candy tucked high in her cheek, sweet when she least expects it. 

 

\----------

 

 

When Remus was thirteen and not yet a man, he found the perfect girl. She was nearly as tall as he was, and when she stood on tiptoe, Remus could see the widow’s peak of her corn silk hair perfectly. Her eyes were the color of thunderstorms during wintertime, and her hands held her life in their fingerprints, and she smelled like lazy spring Sundays — like ageless rain and new seeds. He found himself edging closer to her whenever he could, just to breathe deeply and remember her being. 

 

He did things in her company that he had never bothered to do before: listening to Christmas carols during summer, walking barefoot on a volcano, eating ice cream for all three meals of the day, finding the patience to count all the stars in the sky, crossing the street without looking at both sides, going into a forest during nighttime, wondering if it physically hurt to die. He wondered a lot about kissing during the time — if he should turn his head to the right because he was right-handed, what he should do with his tongue, if his teeth would scrape anything, if her lips would save the impression of his, the way his mattress and pillow did. 

 

He never talked to her though, because this was so much more than words. 

 

He believed he could skydive without a parachute, roam the streets of Venice using no canoes or rafts, cross the Atlantic in one day. One day he was a poet, spending his days in a café with notebooks of his loopy writing. The next day he was a musician playing the guitar on a street corner, even though the only instrument he ever learned to play was the flute. The day after that he was a private investigator with a swirling trench coat and a bloodhound. 

 

She never said anything to him, just smiled and let her bright hair spill onto Remus’s arms and heart. He stored the memories of her away, not in his heart or soul but in the spaces between them. 

 

One day he had finally gathered enough courage to speak to her. He turned and looked at her but there was nothing anymore. 

 

He blinked and instead of seeing thunderstorm eyes, he saw tangled bed sheets and a clock that displayed a time far too late. 

 

His mystery girl had vanished, and with her disappearance, she took the memories that Remus had kept between the two of them. But once in a while, he stumbles upon one that she has left behind for him. He picks them up and keeps them in a book and hopes that one day, they will lead him to her again.   

 

\----------

 

“Mother! Hurry up please! We’re going to be late!”�

 

James had a fixation on punctuation. He knew that he himself was not a paragon of fine example by a far stretch, yet he could not stand to be late to something. Even arriving at the exact time shook him a bit, although he did not want to admit it. Earlier than the event was the preferred choice. 

 

His mother was coming down the stairs. “Really, James. We go through this every year. You’re _not_ going to be late.”�

 

“But if I _was_ , it would be terrible.”� James watches his mum pin her hair up. Twist, twist, clip. 

 

“But you’re _not_ , so why would it even matter?”�

 

“Because I _could_ be.”�

 

Mrs. Potter throws an exasperated look at her son, but she softens it with a smile. She grabs her coat and shouts up. “We’re going to be late, dear!”� then glances at James. “Trunk?”�

 

“Already at the front door,”� James says absently, wondering if she realizes she’s got three grey hairs he can plainly see. Maybe he should point them out to her. 

 

“Your grey hairs are really shining today, Mum,”� he smirks. 

 

Mrs. Potter grunts and continues searching for her purse. She’s very sensitive about her hair. 

 

When the family finally all gets assembled and finally starts making their way to the train station, James catches his mum catching a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror, where she quickly straightens out a few strands of hair. 

 

If there’s one thing that James and his mum share besides genetic looks, it’s their obsession with hair. When he was little, James used to throw temper tantrums at his parents asking them why he couldn’t be a girl. Nowadays, he’s mortified by the thought of it, but he’s always loved the long, delicate strands of hair that a girl could wear. It sounds quite scary, but there are no two strands of hair on his mother’s head that are the same. He loves it when in the dark, it becomes black as coal, but once the sun shines down, it suddenly becomes a multitude of polished mahogany, dried red, sharpened black, and a whole list of other colors that he wrote down once on a rainy day. 

 

Remus wears his hair long and perpetually getting in his eyelashes. Sirius wears his in much the same way, except in Remus you can tell that he really doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and cut his hair while Sirius stylized his that way. Peter has the standard boy-cut where his hair ends at just the tip of his ears. And James himself has a choppy, Kneazle-just-tore-through-this sort of style. 

 

James stares at the red logo on his trunk and thinks of burnt red strands spilling between his fingers while in his room at home, Remus thinks of corn silk white strands dancing on his heart. 

 

\----------

 

 

Review? Please? :)

 


	3. Greetings From The World

****

AfterStorm

**  
__  
**

Chapter Two: Greetings From The World

During the last night before term started for her sixth year, Lily’s parents took her out to dinner in one of those old-time dimly lit diners with grease swamping the food and air. Although it was never reserved outright, the corner booth right next to the jukebox was always saved for the Evanses on Sunday nights for as long as anybody could remember. Years ago they had taken the booth to stop Lily and Petunia from wandering around; these days, they stuck by it out of tradition.

 

“Hmm, what shall we order?”� Mrs. Evans searches through the menu so intently that even Lily has to laugh, for every single time since they have started coming, she always ends up with the spaghetti and meatless sauce dish. Sitting here now watching her mother go through the menu once again, she feels terribly nostalgic all of a sudden. Mrs. Evans’s hair may have grayed over the years and her middle might’ve become rounder and perhaps there were more lines around her face, but her determination to still come up with a new dish was all too wistful. 

 

A bright blonde comes over to them, smiling. “Hi! My name’s Heather, and I’ll be your waitress tonight. Are we ready to order?”�

 

Mr. Evans, whose menu still was untouched in the middle of the table, went first. “Medium rare sixteen ounce steak with mashed potatoes.”� The words roll simply off his tongue, as if he has been practicing this line for his entire life which, in retrospect, he has been. 

 

“Honey barbeque chicken sandwich.”� Lily pulls at a loose string in her shirt, unraveling it until it wraps around her finger like a misplaced tourniquet. 

 

Her eyes still on the menu, Mrs. Evans says, “I think I’ll go with…”� She pauses. “The spaghetti with meatless sauce. Yes, that’s the one.”�

 

“Alright then!”� Heather takes their menus away, promising their food would be with them in a minute. 

 

The Evanses sit back, lapsing into a comfortable silence that could only come from years and years of practice. 

 

“Why isn’t Petunia here tonight?”� Lily asks quickly.

 

Her parents glance at each other shortly, and her father traces his finger along his cup. “She had a date. Some rather large man named Vernon.”�

 

“I know you’re upset, dear —- ”�

 

“No, I’m not upset,”� Lily interrupts. “I, er, actually kind of expected it.”�

 

Mr. Evans looks uncomfortable and quickly changes the subject. “So! Lily dear, how do you think this year will go?”�

 

“Just like always, I expect.”� She drums her fingers rhythmically against the oily surface of the table, playing out a tune. “I can’t really see a change to it. Maybe next year, if I get Head Girl.”�

 

“That’s right!”� When Mrs. Evans speaks, you can _hear_ the exclamations in her voice. “That means you’ll have to be extra good this year, won’t you?”� She was joking, but there was a slight layer of worry that managed to sneak in, despite her bright eyes. 

 

“Mmm,”� Lily agrees. “Not that there’s anything that I could misbehave on. You’ve got teachers watching over you in classes, in the halls, and practically while you’re in the loo.”� She takes a sip of her strawberry lemonade. Lemonade had always been the nectar of her summers. “Actually, Alice will probably end up watching over me in the loo and in the dorms.”�

 

She catches the last vestiges of her parents’ worried expressions. “Mum, _Dad_. I’ll be fine, trust me. I’ve made it through five years already, haven’t I?”�

 

Thankfully, her parents let the subject drop and began arguing over whether another Mister Coffee was _really_ necessary. 

 

Lily cups her chin in her hands, staring off at the jukebox. Its bright colors flash at her, swirling and whirling about in circles and ovals and stars and squares. If she looks in, she would find those wonderful songs from the fifties that she has grown up listening to over the crackling static of the radio. She thinks about Petunia and those slow summer nights when the mosquitoes came out just as the last dusty colors of the sun were setting. She thinks about the fireflies that had flown past her, each carrying almost a piece of the long-gone sun with them. She thinks about the musky smell of those days, of sweat and mowed lawns and that sweet scent of lemonade. She thinks about them as little children, standing side by side on the edge of the creek on that huge boulder, holding hands and leaping to touch the sky. She remembers the darkened jeweled tones of the cattails and water. She remembers the way her fingers molded against Petunia's as gravity tugged them gently down. But most of all, she remembers that moment when they were both convinced that they were flying, flying somewhere far, far away from this life of hazy days. And then she realizes that one of them did eventually get to fly while the other one left those summer days and tried to find another way on her own.

 

She watches an old man shuffle forward slowly, reaching deep into his pockets, pulling out a winking quarter and slipping it into the slot. His aged fingers tremble slightly and reaching forward, indecisive just like her mother, to finally settle and push down on one button. Rock Around the Clock blares out from the old speakers and the old man leans against the jukebox and closes his eyes, snapping his fingers to Bill Haley’s voice and Lily watches as a slow tear rolls down his weathered cheeks and she wonders who he is and where he comes from, and she has a sudden urge to wipe the tear away. 

 

Later, after they have finished their food and are walking out the door, a girl hands Lily a piece of paper. “Here,”� she says, shoving it into her hands. This girl and her companion -- they are handing these little notes out to everyone who leaves. Lily leans over to read her mum and dad’s. 

 

_Avoid the snack monster!!_

_Judy Garland is my Dorothy._

 

Her mother laughs and her father shakes his head and mutters, “Teenagers.”� They both crumple up their notes and toss them in the garbage. 

 

Lily looks down at her own note. 

 

_Dear You: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction…_

 

She chuckles at the déjÃ  vu of this, for just last week she opened a copy of _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ from her local library to find a similar message. 

 

_Our favorite prejudices are invisible to us. We think they are the truth._

 

She thinks of Petunia and flying, the old man with the tear running down his face, of static and sunsets and greasy tables and lemonade and fireflies and slowly slips the note into her pocket. Perhaps the world is trying to tell her something. Perhaps she will listen this time. 

 

\----------

 

“Eat, Peter,”� his mother ordered. “We’re going to be late.”�

 

Peter notices his mother never calls him “Pete”� anymore and always calls him with a tone of commandment. He wonders if this has anything to do with Hannah’s death.

The week after she died and after the flowers were rotting and stinking up the entire house, a letter arrived from his old primary school teacher. “I am so sorry for your lost,”� it read plainly. The front was a painting of flowers in a pot. _How fitting_ , he had smiled wryly. To sum Hannah's life and death in a nicely wrapped package with a bow as a loss was ridiculous and quite insulting. You did not lose a sister. You lost a sock or your way around an unknown room. The death of a sister was a calamity. A ripping apart. A hurricane, a tornado, a 100-foot tsunami. A hell in what you had considered to be the safest place on Earth. To say that you lost something implied it would be found again. This was not the way for Hannah. 

 

The day after she died, his parents paid no heed to him as they rushed about the funeral home, stating that they simply wanted _only the best and would refuse anything lower_. They rushed everywhere. They rushed to work, rushed to bed, rushed through life. They never slowed or glanced away from that point they were chasing towards to notice Peter hunched over, pulling his skin closer to him in this sudden snow storm, the word death floating on his mouth, his tongue swirling around it, teeth sinking into it, tasting this strange new word. 

 

Even today, he thinks they are still rushing. 

 

Three days after she died, the funeral took place. The weather was annoyingly sunny and blue, but even the cheerful chirping of the birds seemed macabre, and the priest seemed distinctly evil. His words drifted away from Peter in this self-imposed shell he had sentenced himself in, carried back and forth by the wind, washing over him until all his sharp edges had been smoothed down into one shapeless figure. After the funeral, he came back to the graveyard, standing over it, squinting and trying to see where in this freshly dug earth Hannah’s crooked smile was, or where her windowed eyes hid. He stared for the longest time, trying to figure out how her life had been reduced to this moment. 

 

Five days after she died Peter sat at the kitchen table, methodically tearing up his homework that he had spent so long on just six days ago. His parents were somewhere he did not know, and he had the feeling that he was completely alone, and not just in the house either. He suddenly found himself amazed at the most ordinary of things around him, as if somebody had abruptly told him that all along he had been wearing sunglasses that blocked the harsh reality of life around him. He watched the way retractable pens worked, fingered their metal screws, and marveled at how the ink came out. He traced the whorls of wood on his tables, trying to figure out this strange message Nature was trying to send to him and whether or not it was meant to be deciphered in the first place. He twisted the caps of bottles over and over, thinking of who had come up with this clever idea. He watched a pair of scissors cut paper over and over again, watching the crisp, clean cut that it delivered and wondered if the same person who invented the twisty caps of the bottles had invented scissors too. He spent hours and hours consumed in this world that he created. There were so many things he had yet to even begin to think about: the strange mechanisms of his typewriter, the sharp edge of his ruler, how paper was made. He could sit and stare at these things until he found out his eyes couldn’t bore holes into them anymore, as if he had been walking around blind all this time. Peter felt a sudden attention to detail around him that bordered on obsessive. He justified his actions by imagining what-if situations. What if tomorrow morning he woke up and found out that all the retractable pens of the world had been stolen by a criminal over night? What if the only remembrance of this particular object was from his memory? He could not let it fail him. Fate could set up this cruel exam at anytime She wished. 

 

Peter watched the white pieces of his homework float down gently, twirling and dancing like Hannah once did…

 

He stood up quickly and swiped the entire pile in his hands, a miniature blizzard he created (and he felt quite like God in this moment) and walked outside, hiding it from the rest of the world. These days, he never runs anymore. 

 

He walked up to the lawn then dropped the pieces one by one until it looks like the front lawn is sufficiently spread with these pieces of his Before life. It had started to rain outside, the first real spring rain. Entranced by this, he dropped to his knees, watching each individual droplet fall past him. He held out his hand and was amazed when they actually rest in the curve of his palm instead of bouncing off this suffocating blanket that has sealed him. He brought it close to examine this tiny droplet, only to find with a sinking heart that it'd melted into one puddle with the other ones before he had the chance to.  

 

\----------

 

Sirius walks slowly into the hallway before his brother’s room, pausing to make sure the rhythmic, deep breathing is still there. He continues down the hall, then peeks quietly into Regulus’ room. 

 

His little brother is whimpering like a lost puppy. 

 

He remembers Remus telling him once that when a person whimpers in their sleep, it actually means they’re screaming in their dreams. He wonders what Regulus possibly has to dream about that would make him scream. He is only ten, teetering on the cusp of boyhood and peering down into the valley of manhood. His voice is still high and girlish, his shoulders rounded and narrow, his hands pudgy and round.

 

Sirius glances at his own hands. They are no longer rounded and pudgy. At some point when he was too busy laughing with his friends, they had turned long and hard, bones popping out with knuckles and veins struggling under his skin. He wishes quickly that they were still round. 

 

The whimpering has stopped now, and the slow breathing has returned. He looks in again. Regulus sleeps spread-eagled on the bed, light blue, innocent bed sheets underneath him. His body is flung as wide as it can, with one hand and one foot completely off the edge, as wide as the open sky, as wide as the childhood Sirius never had. Regulus sleeps with the satisfaction of someone who knows they are vulnerable to attack, yet trust their surroundings enough to keep them away. 

 

Sirius sleeps curled up in a tight circle in the corner of his bed. His bed sheets are dark grey.  

 

He looks down at his watch, noting the fact that it is a Muggle one. It is time to go. 

 

He walks down the stairs, walks past the portraits of all those past Blacks who stare accusingly at him. Going down the stairs of the Black household is like going through a personal history exam. He turns his head the other way, but four years of being Beater on the house team has left him with a sharp sense of peripheral vision. He tries his hardest to pretend he doesn’t see the ones who point at him, the ones that shout unintelligible words, the ones who spit at him. 

 

Outside, he grabs his broom and shrinks his trunk and shoves it in his pocket. He mounts the broom and waits for a few seconds, savoring this feeling of escapement. Then, as hard as he can, he kicks off the ground, shooting up into the blue sky to the Hogwarts Express. 

 

It is not until later after he is settled in his compartment that he remembers he forgot to say goodbye to his little brother. 

 

\----------

 

After he woke up in the hospital from the cursed bite, Remus screamed when he felt the scars in his face digging into him and sucking his brain out. The nurse ran in as well as his mum and dad, dark circles shadowing their eyes from three days of no sleep. After the nurse reassured both him and his parents that he would be just fine, he feigned sleep until his parents finally left. The heavy door clicked shut, creating a stopper between him and this strange, new world. 

 

With amber eyes, he turned around, looking for a mirror. At last he found one in the small connecting bathroom. Wincing, he stepped out of bed and almost collapsed, but gritted his teeth and kept moving, one foot in front of another like a soldier’s march. He braced his hands on the sink, feeling them slip with the sudden sheen of sweat that covered them. And slowly, painfully, he lifted his head up to look at his own reflection. 

 

His eyes were dark and empty. He leaned in close to look, as if he would magically be able to see through them into the dark recesses of his brain and figure out the rest of his life. His nose was bloodied and bent, his lips dried and cracked. A deep slash ran from his ear through half his cheek to rest just before his mouth. Remus raised his shaking hands, suddenly too cold and dry for him, to his face, touching his heavy eyes, his odd nose, his hard and frowning lips, his sunken cheeks, the span of his young brow, trying to figure out how he lost his identity in less than a week. 

 

Today he glances at all the eager first years running around amok, excitement shining through their scrubbed faces. He watches the mothers holding back tears as they help them on the train. The young, foolish lovers in the dark corner whispering bittersweet nothings in their ears. The beautiful, rosy girls and the handsome, prince-like boys with a lifetime ahead of them. 

 

_Fuck you all,_ he thinks. _Fuck you all for living the life I couldn’t_. 

 

\----------

 

Somebody leaps on top of James and gathers him in a headlock. 

 

“James!”� the person cries, choking him. 

 

“Geroff me, Sirius!”� he shouts and slips through his best friend’s arms. 

 

Sirius has not changed much from the last time James saw him, but on closer inspection, he sees the newly added age in his eyes and the slight lines in his forehead. _This is crazy_ , he thinks. _We’re sixteen. Wrinkles are meant for when you’re sixty_. 

 

Shaking his head, he grins, the old James back in action again. “How was your summer?”�

 

Sirius sighs. “Must we go through this every time? I say ‘shitty, how was yours?’, you say ‘absolutely wonderful, we vacationed in Italy for two weeks.’”�

 

“Dear me, here I was thinking that I was getting too predictable.”�

 

They laugh together, not because what James said was particular funny but because of this reunion between two friends. Although James and Sirius act like they’ve known each other forever since they were out of the womb, they only really met at Hogwarts. Even when they were young, the Blacks and Potters didn’t exactly mingle in the same social groups. 

 

Together, they roll their trolleys onto the train, gabbling a mile a minute like two teenage girls, reliving their summer and trying to trump the other one with their wild adventures. 

 

They bump into Remus and Peter while finding a compartment and all four seamlessly meld together into a group of surrogate brothers again. 

 

“How was your summer?”� James asks Remus and Peter, but only because he feels obligated to. 

 

“No!”� Sirius interrupts. “Let me. Remus, yours will be ‘alright, nothing too exciting happened’, and you — you Peter, will say ‘it was good, how was yours?’”�

 

All four laugh this time, great big belly laughs in this shining moment when their circle is complete, when they’ve been apart long enough to forget about the other one’s faults, when they still believe the others are _perfect_. 

 

\----------

 

Sixteen compartments down, Lily Evans throws her arms around her best friend Alice as they sit down and mutually ask how their summers went. 

 

Perhaps the Gryffindor sixth years are more alike than they think. 

 

\----------

\---

\----------

Blergh, I must get on to review responses someday. I promise I will, really! *Crosses heart*

Still, would you be kind enough to review on this chapter? :)

 

 

 

 

 


	4. My Own Constellation

**AfterStorm**

 

_**Chapter Three:** _My Own Constellation__

 

“Alice! How’re you doing?” Lily nudges around her trunk to flop down on the compartment seat. “Two months apart and you averaged…let’s say, one letter per three weeks, eh?”

“You should be lucky you got anything at all! Mum gave Ferrie away right when I got home. I had to walk _five bloody kilometers_ to get to the local post offices.” Alice pokes the cage next to her feet. “Just got this one last week.”

“She’s cute. What’s her name?”

Alice shrugs. “Not sure yet. And it’s a he. I was thinking of Romulus a couple of days ago.”

Lily raises an eyebrow. “As in, the founder of _Rome_?”

“Co-founder, actually. I liked Remus first, but then – well, can you imagine? Stroking _Remus’s_ feathers? I don’t think I’d be able to manage that without thinking of the human Remus.”

“Not that the human Remus has feathers.”

“Who says so? He could be very sneaky, you know.” Alice grins. “Anyways, enough about me. Look at you! What did you do with your hair?”

“I know,” Lily grins, shaking her head back and forth. “You like it?” 

“Yeah, looks really different.”

Over the summer, Lily had given up on keeping her long hair. Since before she could remember, her hair had always been past her waist. Lately though, she had been getting a bit sick of it, how it was constantly just _there_. After she had gotten it cut, she felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her, a weight she hadn’t even noticed was present before. Originally, she wanted something jaunty, sexy – something that worked well with the angles of the face. But as she sat in the revolving chair, she had been too much of a chicken to follow through on her plan, afraid that she would look stupid. In the end, she had opted just for a neat chop at her shoulders. 

“I’ve grown rather attached to it. Feels like I lost a bunch of weight. Real self-esteem booster, cutting your hair.”

“Maybe I should get a haircut then. Merlin knows I need a self-esteem booster.”

“What happened?”

Alice shrugs. “Frank and I kind of broke up.” She looks out the window, and not for the first time, Lily wishes Alice wasn’t so blunt in saying everything. “Not a big deal or anything. But…yeah.”

Shocked, Lily mulls over this new piece of information. She knows Alice isn’t expecting any sort of the “comforting crap you try pulling over me”, but she still feels she should do something. She knows they are far too young to understand love – true love, not the sort that the local library seems to carry in bulk. When it comes time for her to do the consoling though, she is left empty with only cold fingers to twiddle. 

“Why didn’t you mention anything about it in your letters?”

“That would’ve required another walk down to the post office. I don’t think my poor quads could’ve handled that,” Alice laughs half-heartedly, yet clearly implying that the conversation is over. “Let’s not talk about Frank now. Did you see Charlie Grey today? Phwoargh, what happened to him and where can I get some?”

“You’re asking me? Hogwarts-expert-on-all-matters-especially-but-not-limited-to-boys Lily?”

Smirking, Alice swats at Lily. “Hey now, no need to get catty just because I’ve actually had a boyfriend.”

“I have too had a boyfriend before! In fact, I have had _multiple_ boyfriends before.”

“Hopefully not at the same time, then.”

This time it is Lily who whacks Alice on the arm. “Just because I haven’t had a boyfriend who propositioned me with chocolate syrup, a broomstick, and an extra-sticking charm doesn’t mean I’m inexperienced.”

“Okay, okay – that only happened _once_.”

“Best day of my life too.”

“While we’re on the topic of boys and a general discussion of love –-”

Lily snorts. “Who said love was ever involved?”

“– did you hear about Narcissa?” Alice continues.

“Well, as I have canceled my subscription to _Hogwarts’ Glamorous Gossip_ , I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“She got engaged to that Malfoy boy a month ago.”

Lily turns quickly. “ _Narcissa_? The blonde girl from Slytherin?”

“The one and only.”

Lily stares ahead, incredulous. She has always seen Narcissa as the quiet girl that morphs into the background if you aren’t looking carefully. She has rarely had any interaction with her, due to both Narcissa’s withdrawn nature and the fact that, well, she was a Slytherin. But to be engaged to a Malfoy – the biggest name in the wizarding world – surely that unpleasant task belongs to an older Black sister.

“The Blacks weren’t too thrilled with the arrangement. I think they had been secretly vying for Bellatrix and Malfoy. I heard that Bellatrix managed to destroy several family heirlooms before someone stopped her.” 

“As they should be,” Lily nods. “Bellatrix and that Malfoy boy – they’re practically synonyms of each other. How old is Narcissa anyways? Thirteen?”

“Fourteen.”

“And he’s –”

“Twenty-two.”

Lily emits a low whistle. “There’s got to be something wrong with that.”

“Well…it’s the Blacks and Malfoys. If anyone can get around the law, it’s them.”

After a while, when they’ve run out of the initial conversation topics, Lily and Alice sit next to each other, silently pondering their own thoughts. The quiet scares her a bit; it is defined by the steady turns of train wheels and unbroken rise and fall of their breathing. Silences are strange things. Somehow when a person’s mouth is shut, so much more can be expressed – their body language, mannerisms, the stolen glances – all that adds to a certain atmosphere that settles when the propping of words falls down. There are tense, awkward silences that make Lily wish she had a witty comment to make. Then there are comfortable silences that can only be shared through years of practice. Some time when she was too busy growing up, these silences have become so much more important. 

She looks outside as the world runs past her in streaks of green and blue, like a sprinter no one can catch. Palming her fingers against the glass like a peace offering, she tries to grab the sprinter, to let him sit on the curve of her fingers and watch him rest a while. 

\----------

It is already dark by the time the Hogwarts Express pulls into its destination, and Lily’s stomach is grumbling. Several hours of marathon sweets haven’t been able to satisfy her hunger for warm, real food. She barely pauses to glance at the sky, although it is a beautiful night – some stars are already shining, and Lily can hear Sirius Black pointing out the Canis Major constellation to whoever would listen. 

A few summers ago, Lily was babysitting for her neighbor when the parents called with an apologetic message that they would be two hours late. The young girl – Betty – had refused to sleep even after a glass of warm milk. Desperate and tired herself, Lily had allowed herself to be dragged by the arm outside where they laid on the wet grass and let the scent of honeysuckles spill over them. 

“The red one’s Betelgeuse,” Betty had said, pointing. “It’s part of Orion. See where his arm reaches out to? That’s Taurus, the bull he’s trying to shoot.”

“Mmm,” Lily said, more focused on seeing if she could sneak in a few minutes of sleep. 

“I feel bad for Orion and Taurus.”

Lily opened one eye. “Why?”

“Orion tries every night to get Taurus, and Taurus never knows whether or not he’s going to live tomorrow. See there?” Betty pointed to an empty space where Taurus’s mouth would be. “I think it looks like he’s frowning.” 

“Why do you think he frowns?”

The ten-year-old had shrugged her thin shoulders. “Maybe it’s because he’s forgotten how to smile,” Betty yawned, as Lily stared at how her eyelashes reached towards the sky.

“Have you ever made your own constellation?” Betty picked at the chipped sparkly polish on her nails, letting the glitter fall onto the grass, as if the green was able to reflect the stars. 

“Can’t say I have. Have you?”

“All the time. Sometimes, when I squint my eyes really hard, the stars become blurry and look like tears. It makes it look like the sky’s crying.”

Lily had gone home that night feeling inexplicably empty.

“Come on!” Alice shouts in her ear, grabbing her arm and pulling her into a carriage. “What are you going to do, stand there all day? Hurry, close the door. The _Marauders_ are coming, and someone’s going to end up dying if we have to sit with them.” 

Lily has just shut the door when the four boys walk past her. Perhaps _walk_ is not the best word to describe them. Sirius is piggybacking on James, while Peter cuffs James’s shoulder, and Remus looks on with the expression of one resigned to his current situation and might as well enjoy it. “It is a bit stupid, isn’t it? Their name. Probably got it out of one of their history books – if they read them at all. Hope they actually looked up the definition of the word first though.”

Alice raises her eyebrow. “Remus Lupin I can imagine so. But James? And _Sirius_? Not exactly geek-boy extraordinaire.”

“ _Definitely_ not the type to take home and show Mummy.”

They fall into a long conversation on what kind of guy would be perfect enough for them to have fun with _and_ show Mummy until Alice abruptly changes the topic, like she usually does.

“It’s a bit strange. I don’t have _that_ feeling.”

“ _That_ feeling?”

“ _That_ feeling. You know, the one that makes you say giddy things like ‘this year’s going to be awesome’ or ‘I know things are going to change so much this year’.” 

“Maybe you’ve just gotten used to the initial ‘wow’ factor Hogwarts has to offer. Six years in one school can do serious damage to the human mind. Perhaps we should plan an escape this year to Beaubaxtons where we can try to salvage _that_ feeling back again.”

Alice chuckles. “I wouldn’t be caught dead with those French girls. ‘Oooh, I am verrry beeeautifuuul’,” she drawls out, waving her hands in the air. 

Lily nods. “It is a bit of a sobering thought, isn’t it? I never thought that I could become accustomed to magic. I thought it was the most wonderful thing when I first came. Now, for ten months out of the year, I can’t imagine life without it.” She leans out the window, looking for how much longer until the carriages got to the school. Instead, her eyes fall onto the back window of the carriage in front of them that the four boys got into. From here, she can see James standing up quickly and hitting his head, Sirius laughing at him, Peter leaning back on the seats with a raised eyebrow, and Remus looking back directly at her.

She quickly turns her head the other way and casts away his stare as something that never happened. It _couldn’t_ have happened. 

“What are you doing?” Alice asks, peering at her curiously.

“Nothing. Just…just looking at the stars.”

This strange disease that Lily has caught over the summer has taken hold of her body. Talk to anyone else who’s had it before, and they’ll tell you – lies slip under your skin to run through your blood and stay there, daring you to try and get rid of them. 

\----------

Remus turns his head around back to the conversation. He is not embarrassed to be caught staring; his interactions with Lily are rare and short, and he doubts she would actually come up to him and question him. What drew his attention back though…that’s what puzzles him. He supposes it could be chalked up to walking past their carriage a while ago and noticing her haircut. Despite their infrequent contacts, it is near the full moon and all his senses are heightened to detect change. It suits her, he thinks, much better than her long, heavy style before. 

“This year’s going to be awesome!”

“Things are going to change so much!”

“The Marauders have returned to their throne once more!” James shouts, standing up and hitting his head on the low carriage roof. 

Remus grins. “Try not to let it get all to your head.”

“But that’s where everything _is_ ,” James gleefully exclaims. “It’s where the _genius_ lays.”

Sirius snorts. “Is this the same genius who poured pumpkin juice in his cereal this morning?”

“And who’s fault would that be, you mangy, underhanded, switched-the-two-containers person?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Really, I don’t.” 

“James.” Peter sits next to the window and watches the two boys through the reflection, bemused. “Sirius has been doing the same trick since first year, and you always fall for it at least twice a year. It’s a bit like a tradition now, almost.”

“Yeah? And what would that tradition represent?”

Peter shrugs. “The fact that you didn’t go home and magically become smart. It’s reassuring. It keeps balance in our lives. Merlin forbid one day you actually come in one day as Head Boy or some other crap. The entire world as we know it would crumble.”

“Now see here, Peter, there’s such thing as logistics in the keeping of the entire world as we know it – ”

“– And the pseudo-genius is back in action again –”

“ – Don’t even get me started on you, you mutt – ”

“ – That’s pretty politically incorrect, James – ”

“ – Fuck political correctness – ”

“ – Even more politically incorrect – ”

“ – And I suppose you, Peter, would have absolute authority on all matters dealing with political correctness – ”

“ – More than you – _I’m_ the one with Muggle parents – ” 

“ – Who says the wizarding world isn’t chock-full of lying scammers – ”

“ – Yes, well, we always knew you had certain problems, Sirius – ”

“ – _Fiddlesticks_ – ”

“ – _Oooh_ _,_ I’m really hungry – ”

“ _Gentlemen_ ,” Remus breaks in, amused. “We’re here.”

As the three other boys scramble out, quite like their first time, Remus glances behind him at the next carriage. Even from here, he can still see Lily’s red hair.

\----------

After Lily and Alice have sufficiently filled themselves up to their earlobes at the Welcoming Feast, they crawl upstairs, stopping briefly at each floor. 

“I’m…never…eating…that much…ever…again,” Lily huffs, resting her hands on her knees. 

“You…say that…every…year.”

“Yes, but this…year I really…mean it.”

“You say that every…year too.”

Lily grins. “Bugger off, will you? Where’s your…off button?”

“That’s a confidential secret.”

Finally, both girls burst into the dorm and collapse on their beds. Kate, one of the other three girls that shares the room with them, is already asleep – _“how did she get here so fast?”_ – while Victoria and Emily are probably both downstairs being entertained by the enchanting Marauders. 

Another of those comfortable silences pass, and Lily picks lint pieces off her shirt while thinking about that night babysitting Betty again. 

Betty had grabbed her arm and pointed up. “I’ll show you one of my constellations. Do you see?” she asked, tracing the shape of two people, one large and imposing, and the other small and thin. “The bigger one is richer and prettier and more popular. Everyone loves her, and she spends her days going to birthday parties. She has all the fun for both of them.”

Lily swallowed and tried to ignore the feeling of grass poking into the back of her knees. “What about the smaller one?”

“The smaller one is poor and lonely, even thought they’re sisters. The bigger one doesn’t like her, so no one else likes her either. She spends her day in the corner with her books. She does all the crying for them.”

“I didn’t break up with him, you know.” Alice’s voice is quiet, a low murmur like a mother putting a child to bed. 

Lily listens to the sounds of excitement downstairs, dimmed and blurred together so it seems like it’s occurring in a whole other world. She listens to how Alice’s voice stands so clearly against it all. “I know,” she whispers back.

Alice fidgets a bit, flipping onto her side. Her hands trace symbols and pictures and letters into her bed sheets, and Lily wonders if Frank’s name is hidden in there somewhere. 

In the darkness of the dorms, Lily, normally very good at reading people’s body language, has lost her first sense. She folds her hands beneath her head, closing her eyes and trying to adjust to this change. An owl hoots outside, the wind rustles through the leaves that will soon turn gold and crimson and orange and fall gently onto the lake that ripples and splashes along with the sighing of the day coming finally to an end and the beginning of a new day and year and the shouts are still coming from downstairs and a mosquito buzzes around in the room flying in circles above her and throughout this cacophony, Lily hears Alice’s voice, high and clear. 

“He’s becoming an Auror.”

Lily is carefully neutral. “A respectable job.”

“Yes, but how long will he last to enjoy it?” Alice snaps. “He could _die_ out there, Lily – he could die, and the last thing he said was he didn’t want to string me along – me, who should be at the pinnacle of her life instead of waiting around for a boyfriend who wouldn’t be there for her ninety percent of the time. Oh, and he also threw in some cheesy bullshit about him dying and blah, blah, blah and not wanting me to get hurt.

“I don’t _care_ what the _Prophet_ says, and I know I just said this afternoon that I didn’t have _that_ feeling, but I do now, Lily, I do. Everything’s not all terrific and great like we’re made to believe. Things are going to be changing so much that damn it, I’m scared to even lift a finger, lest I disturb something.”

Alice’s heart is laid out on the table, like a last desperate attempt in the gamble of life. It is one of the few times Lily has seen her like this. So Lily does what any best friend would do – gathers up her friend’s fallen defenses and tries to build them up again. 

“Oh, Alice,” she sighs in the dark. Lily sinks onto Alice’s bed, not sure of what to do. She has never been good at comforting people, especially when they cry. But tonight, she reaches her hand out hesitantly and lets her fingertips touch a strange wetness on her friend’s cheeks, a fleeting gesture of reassurance. 

In the six years Lily has known Alice, she has noticed that Alice is never a pretty crier, someone who’s tears makes their eyes seem glittery, their pouting lips adorable, and their sniffles childlike. Alice squeezes her eyes shut, as if trying to put a dam on this odd substance coming out of them. Her hair never stays calm, her nose is always stuffed and red, and the corners of her mouth press down trembling, as though holding a large weight. She cries like she does everything else – with the fervor and the carelessness of one who doesn’t care what everyone else thinks about. 

After a while when Alice’s sniffles quiet down and a deep breathing replaces it, Lily climbs back in her own bed, pulling the covers over her. The sounds from downstairs have ceased, the owl has stopped hooting, the wind has stilled, the lake is calm, the mosquito has flown away, and on this dark night, Lily’s eyes have finally adjusted to see through the shadows of her room. Even then, she finds herself unable to sleep. 

During the middle of the night, after Victoria and Emily have finally returned, Lily turns on her side and watches the night sky through the window, the close to full moon and the almost three-dimensional stars, as if she can reach out and have them settle on her palm. She wonders if Betty’s two constellations are still up there, suspended along with the sad Taurus and ever-searching Orion. She continues watching the stars twist themselves into the constellations of her life – of the Gemini sisters that continue growing further apart every year, the chained princess that holds her secrets in her past, and the wolf that curls around itself sadly who seems to stare straight at her. 

\-----------

**AN:** I must admit, I did hesitate about a week in posting this, due to the fact that it was the first real chapter in which any action took place and I actually had to drag myself over and write (horrors of horrors) dialogue, which I absolutely _suck_ at. So, your reviews would be much appreciated. And I promise to try to update earlier next time. :) Oh yes, I also suck at formatting, so if anyone could tell me how I can get the title in the center, that would be much appreciated. 


	5. Whiskey Tea and Rain Ink

**AfterStorm**

**Chapter Two:** _Whiskey Tea and Rain Ink_

The Slytherin Dungeons are always cold, a coldness that lingers long after the fire has started, hiding in dark corners and subtly drifting along, draping itself amongst confident shoulders and expensive robes. Narcissa sits on the couch in front of the fire in her pajamas, tapping her bare toes against the floor. She had once caught a glimpse of Gryffindor tower, swathed in its deep reds and dripping golds and its blazing fireplace. She stares now at the pitiful spark that strains to leap up and dance. 

She is braiding her hair, letting those fine, silky strands that sift through her fingers like smooth sand. Andromeda had actually been the one to teach her how to braid hair one rainy night, but Andromeda is now gone, and only she and Bellatrix rattle alone in their large mansion; it is uncommon that their mother or father is able to join them. 

It is difficult living with two older sisters; one develops a quick immunity to never getting noticed. No, Narcissa Black rarely gets noticed, especially not with Bellatrix only a few years older than her. 

Bellatrix is beautiful. She rarely smiles, never laughs, and always scowls, but her haughty attractiveness and sweet, syrupy voice enchants everyone. Only those closest to her have ever truly seen her lose her control—the rest of the world sees her as a faraway ice queen of sorts, one that sits on her throne of conceit and manipulation. With her dark, ebony hair contrasting sharply with her soft, fair skin, she is ying and yang personified. It is lucky then, that Narcissa has her hair, her lovely, pale golden hair that falls down her back like a mute waterfall. It is her only redeeming quality, her mother tells her. 

But Narcissa has something Bellatrix doesn’t, something that the older Black has been waiting forever for—the engagement to a Malfoy. Narcissa has Lucius Malfoy’s hand in marriage, a pale and fine-boned one with smooth skin and no calluses. And Narcissa sighs because Bellatrix can go on strutting in her way and pouting her scarlet lips, but she’ll still be the one with a wealthy and successful marriage agreement. 

She shivers suddenly in this room, then wonders what kind of person she’s turning into lately. This is her fourth year at Hogwarts, and she has always obediently accepted Slytherin, accepted the twisting snakes of green and silver that has tangled with her life since she was born, accepted the Dungeons and their eerie quietness where voices never seem to be louder than a whisper. In her four years here, she has never once thought the Dungeons were cold, nor dangerous, with its candle fires that waver against the walls, flickering like secret smirks. One day she had sneaked a glance into Gryffindor Tower—such a rowdy place of chaos! People yelling this way and that, things flying through the air, and so much commotion it made her head spin.

And yet…and yet, she had looked onwards, hungrily bathing in the warmth and light that seemed to seep through the cracks of the tower, watching her classmates laugh with each other until the portrait door swung heavily shut in her face, leaving her alone and cold once more.   

Bellatrix still hasn’t spoken to her yet, even though it’s been a month since the engagement news came out. She will wander around the home like an affronted thief, and she will make sure Narcissa knows full well how much she hates her for it, but she will never look straight at her. Her eyes pass by her day after day, like the younger girl is a painting in an art gallery that demands not a second glance, its brushstrokes are so repulsive. And she will see Bellatrix’s lips curling into a barely-disguised sneer when she thinks Narcissa is not looking, and there will be an inexplicable pang of emptiness in her heart. She has gained a husband but lost a sister. 

Narcissa remembers when she was younger and used to play with Bellatrix all the time. Back then, Bella’s cold beauty had yet to come through and instead, a warmer, happier girl inhibited her body, a girl who used to teach Narcissa how to hold a wand and how to make paper cranes. 

“Cissy,” she would smile, lighting up her round face. “Come here, your buttons are all mismatched.” 

“Cissy,” she would laugh, holding out her hand with a wild blossom she had plucked from the trees. “Look at this flower!” 

“Cissy,” she had whispered, the night before she left for Hogwarts. “I’m scared about what school’s going to be like. Do you think I’ll get in Slytherin?”

The first year seemed to be difficult for her, and she wrote letters home constantly, letters filled with stories of teasing and jeers and the sudden realization of how cruel her fellow classmates could be. Her mother merely tsked and set the letters aside, muttering something about how _she was always too kind in the first place_. But in time, the distances between each letter grew longer and longer, until Narcissa was beginning to wonder if all the owls at Hogwarts had suddenly died overnight. 

When Bellatrix came home from her first year, Narcissa stared at the face of her sister that she used to know so well, the wide, smiling one that somehow morphed into a sharp, angled plane within the months they were apart. Bellatrix huffed a sigh of frustration when Ann Katherine, a fellow younger sister of a Hogwarts attendee, waved goodbye to her on the train platform. “Bye, Cissy! It’ll be us in a few years!” 

“Narcissa,” Bellatrix scolded, shaking her head. “Don’t let anyone call you ‘Cissy’ from now on.”

“Why not?”

The older girl rolled her eyes. “You’ll see soon. You can’t go to Hogwarts with people calling you ‘Cissy’.”

But looking at that focused, colder look on her sister’s face now, Narcissa wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to go to Hogwarts any more after all. Of course, she could never share this growing spark of fear with anyone, especially coming from her family. She found herself envying the Muggle-borns, for their comfortable ignorance, for their blissful unawareness of how different their lives would be had they been born with a surname that carried generations of unspoken dues. 

By the time her first year rolled along, she felt physically sick as she got out of bed. It was only after riding the train over, sitting under that Sorting Hat, and spending the first two months in her dorm did she realize: Hogwarts _changed_ you. It had changed Bellatrix, who had shed her former skin to reveal the tighter, emptier skin of adolescence. It changed her, somehow finding its way underneath her covers and into her head, as much as she did to fight it out. It even changed her cousin, Sirius, who found himself in Gryffindor and began spending time with people she knew her mother could never approve of. 

And when Narcissa came home from school that year, she finally understood Bellatrix’s message to her all those years ago. 

_Do not call me Cissy. That is the name of a coward, a fool who watches the world through shaded eyes. My name is Narcissa, a harsh string of syllables that tells a story of numbness you will never know of._

\-----------

When Petunia is left alone in the house, she sneaks into the wine cupboard that her father never bothers to lock up, believing that neither of his daughters would ever drink underage. While she waits for the water to boil, she picks out a bottle of old whiskey from the very back and sets it on the kitchen table. 

The whiskey is a tawny amber liquid, rich and violent in its implications of what it could do if used correctly. She picks up the bottle and tilts it, first left, then right, watching the alcohol slosh about, following the flicks of her wrist. She quite likes watching it do whatever she wants it to. Petunia holds the bottle with two hands now and shakes it up and down as hard as she can, creating a brutal sea storm of numbness, fierce in its power, yet contained within the glass. 

After the tea is ready, she pours it into an old mug, chipped and cracked, watching the heat mists rise up like ballerina arms. She takes the whiskey bottle and pours a satisfactory portion of it into the cup. Then, wrapping her hands around the cup like a lost sailor clutching onto a lifeline, she walks over to the living room. 

Petunia brings her lips up to the mug and takes a tiny sip, feeling the harsh liquor taste mixing with the tea as it burns a path downwards. It is too hot right now, so she keeps her cold hands around it and stares at the left wall of the room. 

In every home, there is always a collection of history stored somewhere that keeps nostalgia and reminiscing awake. In her home, the left wall of the living room is filled with photos, framed and mounted nicely in oak wooded casings. There are photos of Lily with cake all over her face as a two-year-old, photos of her mother and father’s silhouettes against the pale backdrop of the moon, photos of Lily holding out a flower, grinning with two missing front teeth and mismatched socks, the matted paper of Lily’s handprints at age two, her mother sitting on the front porch swing and reading a novel. 

There are also, scattered here and there, photos of Petunia. Of Petunia playing the piano. Of her sitting on a towel on the beach, watching the seagulls gather around each other. 

But while Lily seems to age impossibly slowly through these photos, Petunia goes from five to fifteen within one leap. And despite the fact that she often sees Lily or her mum or dad staring over at these photos with a longing look on their faces, Petunia looks at these photos as evidence, evidence that the days have been passing, turning into months, and years. Evidence that no, she has not been stuck in her five-year-old body for the past fourteen years, that time has passed and she has not been just wandering aimlessly in a mechanical middle all this time.  

And maybe it’s because she was the first child, and her mother and father hadn’t known to take photos of her and display them proudly. Maybe she was a lesson to them so that three years later, when Lily was born, they were perfectly prepared. 

But even as Petunia would like to believe that is the true story, there is always the little niggling corner of truth that speaks out every time. Of what a photo symbolizes, of how she missed that stop. _You were so beautiful to me that I couldn’t depend on my own memory to remember. You made me so proud that I want you to see how wonderful you were. You were so important to me that I stopped everything else to spend time with you._

She reaches towards a photo of her when she was ten, holding an A+ paper in one hand, and slides the frame off from the wall. She reaches towards the other one of her playing the piano. And then the one on the beach. 

It doesn’t take long, and after she’s taken down all the photos of her, she stands back to take a look. 

And she cannot notice a difference in the wall. If anything, the wall seems that much more relaxed, spaced out, more able to breathe, as if her presence had been choking them all. 

Holding the frames in her hands, she walks outside and throws them all into the garbage can, watching indifferently as each one lands on top of one another, cracking the glass so that her five-year-old self, ten-year-old self, and twelve-year-old self break into so many pieces that she cannot put them back together again. 

She goes back into the house, ignoring the photo wall, and picks up her mug, taking a sip. It is no longer too hot now; while she was busy, the tea and whiskey has turned cold. She grimaces and takes another sip. And another. And another, until she has drunken the entire bitterness down, pungent and cold and missing the warmth that rose from it in the beginning. 

\----------

Remus watches Lily quietly from the shadows, cloaking himself in the absence of light. He feels comfortable here, able to reveal his true nature without anyone watching. He can do whatever he wants, and no one can scoff at him, or back away in fear. 

While Remus dresses in shadows, Lily paints herself in golds and reds, even as she only sits on the couch, doing a crossword. But even then, she is captivating to watch. 

He has noticed that she often does crosswords as a procrastination tactic. There may be piles and piles of homework for her, but Lily will always take ten to fifteen minutes out of her day to complete the _Daily Prophet_ ’s crossword. When she does these, she hunches over the paper, brow furrowing in thought and chews the inside of her cheek. 

He has noticed that she wears the whitest pearls on her neck when she feels like dressing up—nothing else, no fancy makeup or anything, just a simple strand of pearls. Rounded, soft pearls that she once confided to Alice made her feel like she was a worldly person once she put them on, for they had come from the bottom of the ocean. 

He has noticed that when she’s feeling happy, she ties a silky ribbon on her knapsack that flutters in the wind like a lost kite. And when she is upset, she wraps the ribbon over and over around her fingers, curling it towards her, as if to keep it closer. 

He has noticed that on those days when they go off to Hogsmeade, Lily rarely wears matching socks. They are usually outrageous socks, like last week, when her left foot had flying pigs and her right foot had frosted cupcakes. He wonders where she gets these socks, and whether she wears them so that people will pay attention or because she merely takes amusement in them. Remus thinks it’s the last one, for he really can’t think of Lily as someone who would demand the spotlight all the time, not unlike a certain few of his friends.

He has noticed that during these trips out, her sweaters never have the round, uniform ones it came with, but rather, plastic emeralds, diamonds, rubies, and sapphires that he has seen her buy at one of the local craft stores. They sparkle and glint in the sunlight, a second-place imitation of their first-place real jewels. 

He has noticed that she is not particularly graceful or poised—she often trips over her books or bumps into people—but when Remus looks at her, there is a belief in him that she could walk on the clouds if she wanted to. And even with her clumsy and unmeasured steps, her handwriting is the neatest that he has ever seen, neater than even Sirius’s, who also, despite his messy smiles and flirtings, has careful, precise cursive. Despite the fact that the rest of her letters are beautifully formed though, her _i’s_ are never dotted, looking like stunted _l’s_ instead. 

He has noticed that on the fourth finger of her left hand, she wears an aquamarine-stone ring, even though he knows for a fact that she is not married. He has seen a couple of people who ask her about this now and then but never receive an answer they want, but only a secret smile instead. 

He is not a stalker, no, but recently, Lily’s odd coloring of reds and greens has caught his eye amidst a sea of otherwise brown or blonde. He is not in love with her either, but like a bird watcher who notices a foreign species one day, Remus is intrigued by her. He wonders if she has ever noticed him. She does know his name, knows a little about his personality, knows him through others, the way one who has spent more than five years with the same group of peers knows each other. 

And Remus wonders if she watches him, and he just doesn’t know about it. But he doubts it, as much as he strangely wants to believe so; years and years of lycanthropy has heightened his senses so that it is near impossible for anything to get past him. 

Watching her, Remus always feels that if he held on tightly to her hand, he would be able to visit the sky, for he is convinced that Lily seems to be a person who would be able to ignore gravity and simply float upwards, drifting towards an unknown force. Or perhaps she would show him a staircase in a room that would grow and grow until he too was above the clouds and maybe then, he would finally find out whether rain came from above or below Heaven. 

He does not talk to Lily much, is not a close friend (in fact, they are really just casual acquaintances), but he has a feeling that he has known her forever. And he hopes that one day, Lily will notice him and walk up to him with her subtle smile and crinkled eyes, for he is much too shy and soft-spoken to do so himself.  

He hopes that when (not if, but when) they visit the sky together, they will leave their footsteps stretching across the cluttered blues and reds and purples. He hopes that they will dip their fingers in rain ink and write using the canvas of the clouds, and they’ll sit together and pull the sun down and watch how their message spreads across the moon. 

The next day, Lily accidentally bumps into him in the corridors. With an apologetic smile and embarrassed duck, she continues towards Gryffindor Tower. For a moment after she leaves, he breathes in deeply with his eyes closed, trying to capture a small piece of his past. Because when she had bumped into him, Remus smelled lazy spring Sundays, the same scent that has haunted his dreams since he was thirteen. He watches her go now, hoping that was her perfume of the world. 

\------------

At the Opening Feast, James looks around the Great Hall, searching for what has held his attention for the better part of the year. Before he finishes combing the entire room though, two small arms wrap around him and turn him around, and he finds himself facing mysterious brown eyes. 

“Diana,” he exhales, grinning, running his fingers through her red hair. 

“James. Did you miss me?” Diana smiles and looks up at him.

“Miss you? He practically had heart failure for the entire summer,” Peter says, reaching across Remus for a roll.

Sirius smirks. “Yeah, only because he wasn’t getting any, and therefore had no exercise.”

James loops his arm around Diana and glares at Sirius. “Sirius speaks from experience, you’ll have to remember.”

He remembers the first time he met Diana—really met her, not just by passing through the halls. He and Sirius were at a small café in Diagon Alley, and while he was studying the menu, Sirius was surveying the entire room for girls, like a squirrel before winter who needed to store up as many nuts as possible.

Suddenly, Sirius had whooped, then shook James’s arm. “Right there, by the window.”

James had turned in his seat, taking in the entire room. “Where?”

“How can you miss her? Her hair’s like a lighthouse beacon.” Sirius sighed, already half in love. “She’s got the most incredible pair of—”

“ _Sirius_.” James cut off his friend’s rapture, even as he peeked over the top of the menu to see for himself. 

“—eyes. Big and brown.”

James grinned. “You’re right. For both pairs.”

She had turned around just then, and James quickly cast his glance back to the menu. As much bravado as he liked to believe he had, in the end, it really was Sirius who was the more daring one. 

Speaking of, his friend was now flashing a grin at the waitress, who shook her head and walked towards them, smiling and blushing nonetheless. 

Sirius continued staring at her as she walked over, and when she was almost to their table, he spoke up. “Hello there, gorgeous. My name’s—”

“—Sirius. And James.”

Temporarily thrown off, Sirius looked at her, half confused and half quite proud. James knew why he was confused, but he also knew the thought that was running through Sirius’s head that was making him proud. _You see, Prongs? Do you see how well-known I am to girls now?_

Clearing his throat, Sirius regained his bearings and beamed up at the redhead. “So you’ve heard of me?”

The waitress rolled her eyes. “I go Hogwarts with you. I’m in the same year.”

James, now interested, looked up. “Really? What house are you in?”

“Ravenclaw. In fact, I think I’ve even had a couple of classes with you.”

James could tell that Sirius was drawing a blank, and from Sirius’s desperate glance at him, he could tell his friend needed help. “That’s right!” he exclaimed, nudging Sirius. “You’re…Dana—no, De—no—”

“Diana. Diana Turley.” 

“Of course!” Sirius had his confidence back again. “How could I have forgotten such a beautiful face?”

But later that week, after their fifth year had started again, all thoughts of Diana Turley had fled from Sirius’s mind, who was now pursuing a Hufflepuff sixth year with a relentless persistence. And when James walked into Herbology that year and was seated next to Diana Turley, it was him who held a real conversation with her, him who asked her out for drinks. 

And in the way that adolescent relationships develop so quickly, soon drinks had turned into dinners and first conversations had turned to first kisses. 

A year later now, James looks at Diana, laughing at Peter and Remus and gives a silent whisper of thanks to Sirius’s observation skills. 

\----------

When Sirius returns to his bed one night, he draws back the covers to find a lipstick silhouette of red that carries the scent of cinnamon and mint.

And when Mrs. Lupin dusts Remus’s room after he has left for school, she brushes a slip of paper off the desk with the neatest handwriting she has ever seen, save for all the _i’s_ that are not dotted. 

And when Mr. and Mrs. Evans return home, they throw away their paper coffee cups into the trashcan, wondering where the shards of glass came from. 

And when Mrs. Black opens Narcissa’s closet to look for a shirt she is convinced her daughter borrowed, she looks in the far right corner to find stacks and stacks of paper that has the name “Cissy” crossed off and “Narcissa” written underneath it. 

And in that moment, these lives become interwoven within each other, tightly wound twines of a rope, each the recipient of something not originally theirs that has come to them, like lost messages out at sea. Perhaps these messages have washed over to them in an unexpected wave, a stop in its path to its rightful owner… 

…or perhaps they have landed into their hands with a purpose, carrying a significance that brings a weight which can never be measured in kilograms or liters, but promises a tidal wave of change. 

\-----------

Right. So about four months. Yeah, not that bad, eh? 

Okay, so I'm totally lying. That is really bad. Apologies. Won't happen again. Hopefully. Let me know what you think though, okay? :)


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